92 OLD MAN OF THE SEA. 



" whereupon I would arise with him quickly, unable to disobey 

 " him, by reason of the severity of that which I suffered from 

 " him."* It will be remembered that eventually, after many 

 days of beatings and ill treatment, Sindbad got rid of the old 

 man by making him intoxicated with fermented grape juice, 

 and then beating out his brains with a stone. 



After his escape Sindbad wandered for some days upon 

 the island until he met some merchants who, when they had 

 heard his story, told him who it was that he encountered. 

 " This man " they told him " who rode upon thy shoulders is 

 called the Old Man of the Sea, and no one ever was beneath 

 his limbs and escaped from him excepting thee." 



The whole of Sindbad's personal narrative points to his 

 adventure having been with an orang utan (simia satyrus) : 

 the difficulty, the only difficulty, but the whole difficulty, is 

 the name ascribed to his persecutor by the people whom he 

 met after his escape. Hole, in his commentary, suggested 

 that the " Old Man " was an orang utan, but the qualifying 

 words " of the Sea " so baffled him that he was prepared to 

 consider them a mistake. " I would willingly suppose " he 

 wrote, " the phrase i of the sea 7 to be an addition of the trans- 

 " lator, not countenanced by the original : or that it was 

 " applied to Es-Sindbad's persecutor merely on account of his 

 " insular abode, or usual appearance by the sea side. If 

 " either of these conjectures be allowed we may pronounce 

 " him, without any hesitation to be an orang outanf Hole 

 then goes on to give his reasons for his opinion. 



Lane agreed with Hole that the " Old Man " was an 

 orang utan, and supported the theory that the words " of the 

 sea " merely denoted the insular abode. 



Burton scoffed at the idea : " the inevitable orang-utan " 

 was his jeering comment. But his own suggestion does not 

 seem worthy of much support. The story is, he says " a 

 " jocose exaggeration of a custom prevailing in parts of Asia 

 " and especially in the African interior where the tsetse fly 

 "prevents the breeding of burden-beasts In 



* Lane's translation. 



Jour. Straits Branch. 



